I don't know why most people would need that much SSD. Having all of your programs on SSD I can understand, but for the average user having your music / pictures / files on HD is fast enough. Does it really make sense to have a 100GB iTunes library on SSD?

I don't know why most people would need that much SSD. Having all of your programs on SSD I can understand, but for the average user having your music / pictures / files on HD is fast enough. Does it really make sense to have a 100GB iTunes library on SSD?

My desktop is in my bedroom and if I can reduce the noise a spinning drive makes (and an SSD drive is silent) then its worth it. If Apple sold the 512 GB SSD, I admit I would go for that one instead.

The SSDs in Macs aren't made by Apple. Usually they are Samsung. Because of that, I don't know why you would pay a premium for a lesser product, unless it turns out that it would cost more to put a similarly sized SSD into the iMac, including the cost of installation.

External SSD Thunderbolt in that size range aren't going to be cheap either, at least today. Have you checked the price of a larger than 512GB SSD recently?

I did order the 768GB SSD iMac as I didn't want ANY rotating disks (internal or external), and I didn't want to open up the iMac, at least until the warranty period was over.

I do plan on adding my existing 1TB SSD (2 x 512 M4 drives, RAID-0, in a LaCie "Little Big Disk" ThunderBolt enclosure) which contains my photo library externally to the iMac. The internal 768GB SSD will be fine for the rest of my OS X environment and a BootCamp Windows installation for some occasional gaming.

$1000 DIY 1TB SSD: 2ea $400 SSD drives + a $200 Thunderbolt enclosure (with a couple of HD left over) at todays prices. I already have the RAID-0 SSD running in my Mac Pro ... I just bought a refurb LaCie TB disk drive and removed the disks for the enclosure to use with the new iMac.

I am finished buying any "personal use" computers with internal spinning media. We are in a transition period now with the iMac... and in a few more years, solid state storage will be the only option. I'm not going to wait. Other than my wife's 2009 iMac (which had no SSD option at the time)... we have been 100% SSD since early 2008.

I'll continue to buy external bulk storage based on HDDs... but even then... for daily use, I'll use fast arrays (Pegasus R4)... and do my best to keep them [acoustically] away from the work area.

Guys,
i work with huge files that benefit a lot from SSDs (streaming big audio samples), and looked hard at the options.

The Apple one is just not wise, and should not be pursued no matter what i believe.

If you get a "basic" 1TB fusion drive you'll have the OS and most of applications on the SSD, leaving some space left for storage of other files in case you want to use it. You also can't, limiting the space you use in your Mac so to be sure everything inside is "SSD only".

With the remaining money saved from the Apple option, you can purchase, for example, a 1TB SSD Thunderbolt from, i.e., Lacie (33% more space than Apple option, and looking at MBPro Retina benchmarks, probably faster).
It's still obviously very expensive but:
1- You get more SSD GBs (33%+)
2- You get faster performance driven by both faster SSD and the fact that you have two SSDs you are using instead of one (the one in your iMac and the external one), so there's no competition between the two.
3- You get storage space on a regular HDD already built-in in your Mac in case you need it.

Net, I can't see a way to justify the expense whatsoever, just as much i can't justify buying into Apple RAM upgrades (the single truly rip-off of the company that i believe should be borderline to illegal, we're talking about a 300% mark-up on a commodity that is available everywhere, if only all consumers knew).

If you get a "basic" 1TB fusion drive you'll have the OS and most of applications on the SSD, leaving some space left for storage of other files in case you want to use it. You also can't, limiting the space you use in your Mac so to be sure everything inside is "SSD only".

With the remaining money saved from the Apple option, you can purchase, for example, a 1TB SSD Thunderbolt from, i.e., Lacie (33% more space than Apple option, and looking at MBPro Retina benchmarks, probably faster).
It's still obviously very expensive but:
1- You get more SSD GBs (33%+)
2- You get faster performance driven by both faster SSD and the fact that you have two SSDs you are using instead of one (the one in your iMac and the external one), so there's no competition between the two.
3- You get storage space on a regular HDD already built-in in your Mac in case you need it.

The LaCie SSD external Thunderbolt solution may actually be faster than the internal SSD. It is actually a pair of SSD drives in RAID-0 for speed. They are remarkably fast, even my DIY one.

The LaCie SSD external Thunderbolt solution may actually be faster than the internal SSD. It is actually a pair of SSD drives in RAID-0 for speed. They are remarkably fast, even my DIY one.

If the iMac offers similar SSDs than the MBPro retina, which seems reasonable as all they're doing to save space is placing top-of-the-line mobile internals, they are faster for sure (even +50%). The benchmarks are already out there.

Plus, as i said you have to consider that it's two drives sending data from separate controllers, further increasing overall system speed (i.e. the imac loads an app from its Fusion SSD while the App loades its assets from the external SSD instead of having the two things happening on a single, slower, SSD).

The one thing that puzzles me, but only time will tell, is that i have both an external DVI Display Cinema Display AND a firewire Audio interface that both need to be attached to a Thuderbolt port. If one of the two does not work in daisy chain, i have a problem...

I could only see doing the $1300 SSD if I was a photographer or audio engineer. Those tasks involve needing fast random access to huge files.

For anyone else, right now that deal is not cost-effective. I would note that the price of lesser SSDs is pretty good right now and I suspect the ideal setup for most users, especially now with Macs supporting USB3, is a 256 or 512 GB SSD for the only system drive, and a Thunderbolt or USB3 rotating drive for all your ripped DVDs and Blu-Rays.

I fully expect in five years none of us will be storing our media anymore unless we're creators of it.

I could only see doing the $1300 SSD if I was a photographer or audio engineer. Those tasks involve needing fast random access to huge files.

For anyone else, right now that deal is not cost-effective.

I fully expect in five years none of us will be storing our media anymore unless we're creators of it.

Mike, i am both a photographer and audio producer, but the Apple option just does not make sense.
With the amount you save you get a fusion drive on your iMac plus a faster and bigger external SSD.

Really, the only way you can justify it is if you want a totally clean desk and have not much files to store. But then again, i can't imagine anyone working with photo and audio not needing external devices holding some libraries, backups, etc. so you're back to square one: you'll need to put stuff on your desk, and it's cheaper and way faster to have external SSD disks.

Got the asshat post out the way pretty quick burninggarlic. There are better price/storage options but all are external. The op clearly wants internal SDS with Apple warranty. Money never posted as an issue.

Got the asshat post out the way pretty quick burninggarlic. There are better price/storage options but all are external. The op clearly wants internal SDS with Apple warranty. Money never posted as an issue.

You can't reason with the assumption of "money is no object".
If we do, then we must advise the poster to stick with basic configuration, then pay someone to install the latest and greatest internal SSD while he's away on vacation, and if the Mac fails simply throw it away and purchase another one.

We're trying to be reasonable, that's it.

This said, obviously we are all free to do what we want with our money, we're simply advising people that there are clearly better options for the sake of helping each other, just as much as i believe it would be nice to advise people not to purchase Apple Ram. We're just trying to help.

Got the asshat post out the way pretty quick burninggarlic. There are better price/storage options but all are external. The op clearly wants internal SDS with Apple warranty. Money never posted as an issue.

Great point！

External hard disks go wrong, you just have to send your hard disks to them, and use the back up hard disks for a while.

Internal hard disk goes wrong, you have to send your entire computer to them. Shall I assume you have external back ups?

I really really wish it wasn't as expensive as it is but there isn't much I can do about that. Having been spoiled by an SSD Air I'm far too used to the speed now.

As a photographer I need to access a large database of large files randomly, which puts Fusion out the window as my style of file access use will rarely, if ever, benefit from the SSD side of Fusion.

Secondly, I won't even begin to know how to open a brand new iMac up and start trying to put an SSD in myself. Not only do I not have the knowledge, but I don't want to have to go and buy tools to do the job either. I just want to open the box, turn it on and have a snappy computer to work on my photos (and the odd bit of video).

That's going to cost me £20 more than the Apple SSD (£200 for 1TB Fusion plus £860 for Lacie) but requires I have 'another' hard drive on the desk alongside the current backup one.Edit: Just spotted that Lacie is £749 from Apple.

This solution also requires me to know for certain (which I do not at this stage) that if I never use more than 128gb on the Fusion, that it will never put anything on the HDD and the HDD will never spin up and potentially slow down anything I may be doing.

Bottom line for me is, given the two options, as crazy as it sounds I'm swaying towards the Apple SSD as even though I'll get slightly less storage for daily use, it means one less hard drive to have on the desktop!